


Breaking the Chill

by serendipityxxi



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-19
Updated: 2015-07-19
Packaged: 2018-04-10 04:26:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4377161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serendipityxxi/pseuds/serendipityxxi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Duke has the door open before they get to the top of the stairs letting out light and a flood of heat. Nathan must have called him when she’d zoned out. There’s a blaze going in the fireplace and the heater is on high and for a moment Audrey feels like she’s melting, as if her very bones had been frozen and are thawing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking the Chill

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PeterHaleforAlpha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeterHaleforAlpha/gifts).



> To PeterHaleforAlpha: So I started at least four different fics since getting this challenge, this was the first and I think maybe fits your third request best? I tried to make Duke take some comforting but he is a contrary fox who kept pushing the attention on anybody and everybody else! I hope you don't hate it anyway.

Nathan is silent on the drive back. He just bundles her into the Bronco and turns all the heating vents toward her without a word. Audrey is too cold to do anything but huddle into the reflective blanket. Even her brain feels frozen. But she can see the muscle in his jaw tick visibly and there is tension in his fingers when he reaches over to chafe warmth back into her hands at the next traffic light. He can feel how cold she really is when he does that and she sees his jaw tenses even more.

Audrey didn’t thaw out enough to get mad that he’s mad ‘til they’re almost to The Gull.

“What was I supposed to do, Nathan? Let the kid freeze to death?” She asks in what she means to be a reasonable tone. It comes out as more of a stuttered snap.

“It didn’t have to be you, Parker,” he grits out.

“Of course it d-d-did!” she answers, and she wonders if maybe he was the one with frozen brain cells at the moment.

“Dwight and I were there, Audrey!” he snaps, hitting the steering wheel in frustration. “You didn’t have to go it alone. I could have gone in there instead! I wouldn’t have felt it!”

“Exactly!” Audrey argues back, satisfied that she kept her teeth from chattering enough to get that word out. What the hell was he thinking? This was her job!

 

~*~*~*~*~

 

Nathan parks and slams his door, further annoying her. Audrey’s frozen fingers are still fumbling with her seat belt when he appears at her side. The cold blast of air he lets in with the open door makes her gasp but then his tall frame is in the doorway blocking the worst of the wind. He leans over to undo her seat belt and even through their frozen layers he radiates warmth to Audrey’s chilled skin. There’s a part of her that wants nothing more than to curl into his warmth but he’s pissed and unreasonable, and she’s not helpless damnit, and won’t be made to feel so. She manages to slide out of the truck on her own, cursing its fifteen foot tall tires silently. Nathan pulls the reflective emergency blanket tighter around her and tucks her into his side for the trek up the stairs. Audrey grudgingly lets him because she’s just too cold not to.

Duke has the door open before they get to the top of the stairs letting out light and a flood of heat. Nathan must have called him when she’d zoned out. There’s a blaze going in the fireplace and the heater is on high and for a moment Audrey feels like she’s melting, as if her very bones had been frozen and are thawing.

Then Duke is pulling them through the door. Nathan is flicking the lock. Duke is pulling away her blanket despite her protests and undoing her coat. Duke’s hands are steady and calm as he undoes the icy buttons, the way Nathan’s are supposed to be. Best of all he doesn’t ask her any stupid questions like is she okay. Nathan on the other hand starts to give Duke a ranting rundown on the evening, but Duke is having none of it.

He looks at Audrey and she knows he sees how blue her fingers are and the frost still melting in Nathan’s hair and he shakes his head. “Not now, Nathan. We can talk blame and sense later. No one is allowed to be mad until we are all at 98.6 degrees!” he declares. And shockingly, Nathan listens. Even more amazing, so does Audrey.

Audrey’s boys get her into the bathroom and the fingers that divest her of her clothing, usually with such desire, touch her with nothing but worry and care tonight. She feels her temper mellowing when she sees how badly Nathan’s fingers shake as they undo the button on her pants.

The shower is hot, hot, hot and Audrey’s knees almost give way but Nathan is there to hold her up and make cracks about her landlord being too cheap to install a tub, his long fingers splayed across her abdomen, warm frame pressed tight against her back.

“This shower is big enough to hold three people, Nathan, it’s not a shitty bathroom,” Duke says.

Audrey laughs and watches as Duke’s gaze flits across Nathan’s body now, assessing him for damage, worry in his quick brown eyes. That’s Duke, so full of concern and so unwilling to be caught feeling it.

Nathan catches Duke’s probing look. “I’m fine,” he insists, looking away, busying himself with adjusting the spray so Audrey is more fully hit. There are goose bumps on his arms and a blue tinge to his lips that belies his claim. Audrey watches Duke’s mouth thin as he catalogues the lie.

“I’m f-f-fine too,” Audrey chatters to keep him company, since they’re telling untruths. Both her boys roll their eyes at her.

“More like foolhardy,” Nathan mutters but stops under Duke’s quelling look.

Nathan’s fingers are impossibly gentle as he soaps her up, as tender as Duke’s when he shampoos her hair. Audrey is overwhelmed by how cared for and wanted she feels in that moment. She drops her forehead into Duke’s neck for a long minute, ashamed at how she’d taken this for granted earlier. If anyone knows how hard this is to come by she should. They, all three, stand together under the warm spray in the steamy bathroom until Audrey feels thawed enough to reach for the soap and return Nathan’s favor. Wherever her fingers touch she leaves a trail of goose bumps but Nathan never complains.

She lets Duke help her out of the shower and both her boys help towel her dry when she starts shivering even worse than when they got in. They all three tumble into her bed, damp and pink in the firelight. Nathan holds her while her teeth chatter like machine gun fire and Duke retrieves mugs of hot chocolate liberally spiked with whiskey.

“To warm you up,” he insists.

Audrey laughs because there’s not much that can’t be cured by whiskey in Duke’s opinion. Somehow she manages to drink hers carefully and it feels good burning down her throat, spreading heat through her chest. What really helps are the two warm male bodies pressed close on either side of her.

When she’s through Duke sets her mug on the floor beside the bed and twines himself around her like a big cat, sliding a leg in between hers, his long fingers splaying themselves across Nathan’s hip, anchoring him in their embrace. Nathan spoons himself around Audrey, his arm over Duke’s. His fingers idly stroke the other man’s skin. Audrey can feel the movement. She can feel the tension in her partner’s embrace and knows he’s still mad but she’s concentrating too hard on controlling the shivering to maintain a grudge. Besides he can’t be that mad at her because her cold toes are on his calf and she knows he can feel them but he isn’t complaining.

With her guys on either side and the blankets over them Audrey takes her first deep breath of the evening. She’s still cold but Nathan and Duke are like her own private furnaces, their bodies fit along hers so snugly she’s not sure she could move if she wanted to. She is not alone and that knowledge fills her full of warmth that battles the cold from the inside. Audrey spares a thought for how much worse she would feel if she had had the fight that was brewing between her and Nathan earlier and he wasn’t in the bed with them or worse, if she were recovering from this alone and sends a silent prayer of gratitude out into the universe for these two men.

Somehow she nods off and when she wakes again the room is in shadows. The fire has died down in the hearth. The boys are still awake. Nathan is recounting the events of the day to Duke so it can’t be that much later.

“She was blue when I got there,” he’s telling Duke, voice shaking.

Audrey feels a stab of guilt for worrying them.

“She’s okay,” Duke’s voice rumbles under Audrey’s ear, his hand does something to Nathan that Audrey can’t see but she feels the tenderness in his arm as it brushes her shoulder when he moves and Audrey is glad that even if she weren’t here they would have each other. “You’re both okay,” Duke says, low and with feeling and Audrey can tell it’s partially for his own benefit as well as Nathan’s.

She wants to say she’s sorry and she is sorry for worrying them but truth be told she’d do it again. The risk was worth it as there’s one more Troubled kid safe in his bed tonight, one less family in Haven having to bury someone before their time.

“She should have let me go in there instead,” Nathan growls.

“And what would we have done when you were in there until your fingers froze off, Nathan?” Duke interrupts, voice fond and exasperated all at once. It’s so different from the way he would have spoken to Nathan when she first met them, no teasing, no one-up-man-ship, nothing mean, just affection and worry. It makes Audrey smile to hear it.

“She was the one who needed to go in there,” Duke continues, “We all have our strengths, yours wasn’t what was needed in that situation. Hers was," Duke says simply. Then he continues, "I love her as much as you do, Nathan. Losing her now after all we’ve fought through to get here would kill me but, we can’t lock her up in a glass case, either.” Audrey loves him so much in that moment. He gets it. He gets her. What the hell is wrong with Nathan tonight?

Nathan himself huffs out an aggravated sigh from behind her. “I don’t want to lock her up!” he hisses at Duke. “You don’t get it! When I watched her go in there I just…” He cuts himself off abruptly. Audrey feels Duke’s arm reach across her probably to grip Nathan’s shoulder.

“For this to work we said we’d talk more, Nathan,” Duke chides quietly.

Nathan was silent for so long Audrey thought he wouldn’t answer until finally he did, spitting out the words a few at a time, as if they hurt to say.

“When I saw her go in there… all I could think was I’d rather be the one lost, than the one doing the losing again,” Nathan grits out and Audrey’s heart breaks for him, for the months he spent alone when she and Duke were in the barn. She’d never forget the way he’d begged for death when she’d returned. All the guilt he’d carried that he didn’t deserve. She started to move but Duke beat her to it.

“Jesus, Nathan,” Duke swears, then Audrey hears their teeth clack together and knew it was a kiss with no finesse, just need. She squirms around because she has to see, has to – her hands land on both her boys’ shoulders and they pull apart to look at her. They both look a little lost. She kisses Nathan first because he still looks so broken, blue, blue eyes haunted in the firelight, she kisses him because she's there and real and she loves this man so. She pulls back and kisses Duke next, softer, quieter, a reassurance and a sharing because they both will make sure Nathan knows he isn’t alone.

Then they were all three kissing, hands everywhere and all the cold Audrey had been feeling was washed away in a torrent of heat. She shifts and straddles Nathan, then flips them so he's in the middle between her and Duke. She can’t promise he’ll never lose them, but she can damn well make sure he knew they were with him tonight. She kisses her way along his jaw and down his neck while Duke presses his forehead to Nathan’s and pants next to his ear. “We’re here, man, we’re not going anywhere,” he swears in a dark, silky voice that leaves Audrey pressing her thighs together to ease some of the tension it sparks.

Audrey’s hands are still cold when they trail down Nathan’s stomach and he jumps under her touch, sucking in a sharp breath then grins, the novelty of cold affecting him making them both smile. “Sorry,” she laughs into his shoulder while Duke nudges her out of the way.

“Guess you’re just going to have to watch me,” Duke says to Nathan, even as his big hand closes around Nathan’s dick which was already half hard. “Going to have to watch me stroke your cock, watch it get hard for me, for us,” Nathan and Audrey settle in and watch with fascination as Duke’s quick fingers work Nathan to hardness. Duke’s voice goes rough and dark the way it always does when he talks to them in bed, grounding Nathan in the moment, connecting them in ways touch won’t. “Do you remember when we were seventeen and we’d do this in your bedroom, terrified the Chief was going to walk in on us at any moment,” he asks Nathan, as Audrey kisses and sucks at Nathan’s ear. Nathan lets out a low chuckle, that was all kinds of aroused, his eyes half-lidded in pleasure.

“We couldn’t wait, couldn’t savor it then, it was all fast and hard,” Duke’s hand moves with slow precision now. “We’ve learned a lot since then, like this,” he drags the tip of his thumb around and around the head of Nathan’s cock, “see how good slow can be,” he teases. Nathan groans and Audrey grinds her thighs together at the sound.

Duke moves to kneel between Nathan’s spread thighs, his long limbs golden in the dying firelight, the muscles bunching and flexing as he changes position, his hand never ceasing its pulling, tugging, stroke. Nathan might not be able to feel his hand but he could see the movement, hear Duke’s voice and those were… those were definitely stimulating.

“This spot,” Duke tells Audrey, “was so sensitive,” he lifts Nathan’s cock and sucks at the spot where the head meet the shaft. Audrey has done that herself, has seen the reaction that gets, she knows it’s still a really sensitive spot. Her tongue slips out to unconsciously lick her lips while Nathan’s breathing kicks up a notch.

“Yeah,” Nathan murmurs, his hand going out to thread through Duke’s hair. He watches Duke’s head bob over his dick, sees it emerge from Duke’s mouth glistening with saliva in the firelight, hears the wet sucking noises that are positively indecent. She looks from Duke to Nathan now. Nathan’s pupils are blown, his cheeks are flushed, his hair mussed, he looks well and truly fucked.

“God, the two of you,” Audrey groans. “Hold him for me, Duke,” she instructs. She can’t handle just watching anymore. She straddles Nathan’s hips and Duke guides him into her. Nathan hisses out a gasp at the feel of her surrounding him. He looks at her the way he always does like all his birthdays and Christmases have come at once, but she doesn’t get the warm glow in the pit of her stomach from it because there’s still fear at the back of the lust in his gaze and Audrey can’t have that. She leans down and kisses him, her hair falling around their faces. Duke’s big hands set her hips to moving on Nathan, short shallow rocks of her pelvis against his that grind her clit against his pubic bone and it feels so, so good. Her eyes flutter closed and when they open again she finds Nathan’s gaze is still fixed on her.

She pulls back to breathe the next few words against his ear, to make him not only hear them but feel them, she needs him to believe, “I’m here. You’re here. Duke’s here. We’re not going anywhere, Nathan,” she promises with feeling. For tonight they aren’t. For the foreseeable future they aren’t. But when has Haven ever let them have a foreseeable future. Maybe Nathan reads that in her face, or maybe he remembers that you have to take what you can get in this messed up life they’re sharing. The next thing she knows is he’s sitting up and crushing her to him, dragging Duke closer so he’s pressed up against her back and Audrey is surrounded by them and she’s no longer cold, she’s on fire.

They kiss the three of them, tongues and lips and teeth and the rasp of stubble. Then it’s just Duke and Nathan, kissing next to Audrey’s cheek while Nathan’s hips rock into her and Duke keeps time from behind. She can feel Duke’s hard cock pressed against the small of her back, hot and solid. His hips work in tandem with Nathan’s so it almost feels like the three of them are fucking. Audrey’s breaths start to come in great gasps as they move faster and faster.

Duke’s hands slip in between her and Nathan, cupping and squeezing her breasts, thumbs ghosting over her nipples which were so tight already from the cold Audrey thought she would come just from his warm fingers over their chilled tips but no, what happens is Nathan slides his hand down, down, down, and finds her clit by touch. In moments she’s gasping. She comes with a soft shudder, drawing Nathan with her right after. She collapses onto his chest, burying her cold nose in his neck for long moments.

Then she sits up and they turn to Duke, equal smiles of filthy intentions on their faces. And Duke succumbs without protest to having his cock sucked first by Audrey, then by Nathan. They kiss over the head of it, teasing him, making him wait. Then they kiss around the head of his cock, tongues sliding wetly across his heated skin. Audrey knows the fact that it’s her and Nathan, together, that makes Duke pant like this. He may not say anything but she’s seen that same fear in his eyes more than once. That this could all disappear. That he could wake up tomorrow and maybe everything they had was just the product of a Trouble or something. She hates that he thinks that. So she works extra hard at making those quick brown eyes of his go half-lidded from arousal and Nathan sucks that sensitive spot Duke had talked about where Duke’s cock head met the shaft and Audrey sneaks a slick finger down to rub against his perineum making Duke whine with pleasure, his breath coming in harsh pants as his head twisted on the pillows. It doesn’t take much after that until Duke too is coming with a shout. They all collapse to the mattress when it’s all over, a jumble of limbs and panting breaths for long, long moments.

Between her boys Audrey gives a contented sigh.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” she murmurs into Nathan’s shoulder in the aftermath, her hand stroking along Duke’s arm. “Both of you.”

Nathan squirms a little and she knew he was embarrassed over his confession.

Audrey sits up, taking the sheets with her so she can look at them both. “I can’t promise I’ll never do anything like it again but I can promise I wasn’t throwing myself into a situation I didn’t think I could get out of. I was sure I could talk that kid down and I knew my backup would pull me out if I couldn’t. You’ve both been doing it since we met,” she adds lightly, stroking her thumb across Nathan’s cheekbone. He closes his eyes at the touch. When he opens them again there is gratitude and once more trust in them.

~*~*~

Audrey wakes to a grey dawn and an empty space in her bed. She finds Duke standing by the windows in the kitchen, jeans already slung low on his hips, a cup of coffee in his hands and a thoughtful look in his quick brown eyes. She slides her arms around his waist and presses herself against his bare back, dropping a kiss to his shoulder blade. He doesn’t even jump, just squeezes her hands with his for a moment.

“Thank you,” Audrey murmurs into his skin.

“For what?” he asks.

“For taking care of us last night,” she says simply. “You think you keep your secret so well, Duke, but I know what it is. You think we don’t notice the way you’re always trying to feed us or ply us with alcohol or give us a home,” she gestures around the apartment, “or bring us in out of the cold,” she kisses his shoulder blade again as he tensed. “You, Duke Crocker, are the biggest mother hen,” she teases.

Duke scoffs out a laugh and rolls his eyes even as he turns in her embrace but he kisses her, gently, as if she were still half-frozen and breakable as she had been last night. “Alright, you got me, copper, I might just maybe care what happens to you two lunk heads.”

Audrey grins and goes up on her toes to kiss him again, slipping him some tongue because she isn’t frozen and fragile, damnit. “Don’t worry I won’t tell anyone,” she teases against his lips.

“They’d never believe it anyway,” Nathan calls from their bed, with rumpled hair and sleepy eyes.

“Damn right, they wouldn’t. After all, I have a reputation to maintain.”

Audrey grins and she knows he won’t acknowledge her thanks, won’t believe that he was exactly what she and Nathan needed last night but she knows, and that’s enough for now.

"Y'know," Audrey teases, "I think I might still need some more warming up," she winks lasciviously at Duke who chuckles. "Nathan kinda looks cold over there in that bed all by himself too, aren't you Nathan?"

Nathan laughs. "I might be," he agrees in that slow drawl of his. 

"Given that I care so much I guess I could find it in my heart to do something about that," Duke says contemplatively. Audrey misreads the mischief in his gaze because before she knows it she's thrown over his shoulder. She shrieks with laughter as he strides across the room and dumps her on the bed, almost kicking Nathan in the head with her flailing.

They don't actually get out of the apartment until mid-morning. Audrey is very okay with that.


End file.
